Here’s how phone fees work: Grubhub (which also owns Seamless, MenuPages, Tapingo, and LevelUp) generates a unique phone number for each restaurant on its platform it appears on the restaurant’s Grubhub or Seamless page and redirects to the restaurant's own phone line (a restaurant cannot list its own phone number on its Grubhub or Seamless page). If you look at it that way, you see how much it hurts.”

“You are paying for someone to drink your coffee. “If a customer calls to place a coffee order, we’re paying a $6.42 fee - for a coffee,” Rafaela Negrao, co-owner of Gourmet Kitchen in Brooklyn and the “ ghost kitchen” Palmito, told BuzzFeed News, explaining that she pays a flat fee per phone order. Restaurant owners and the New York City Council say the practice is further squeezing businesses already stretched thin by the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdowns.

Customers trying to avoid online delivery platforms like Grubhub by calling restaurants directly might be dialing phone numbers generated and advertised by those very platforms - for which restaurants are charged fees that can sometimes exceed the income the order generates.

Does grubhub own seamless